When You Can’t Remember the Last Time You Had an Opinion That Was Just Yours

On losing yourself, finding your own mind, and what it means to finally think for yourself

My son is in college now and it has got me thinking back to that time in my own life. I remember when I got to college, I was so excited for the freedom, the independence I finally had. And then realize I had no idea what I was doing, or who I was. I was constantly watching and listening to my friends, what were they doing? Thinking? Planning? I had no idea what I actually thought about anything. I was trying to shapeshift into whatever it was they were doing or being. And it was exhausting.

I would sit in conversations with friends and find myself bouncing around, from opinion to opinion. Taking on the opinions of whoever was speaking. Nodding along. Reflecting back. And it wasn’t dishonesty. It was that I genuinely could not locate what I thought underneath all of that. I was agreeing with everything.

This was college. I was figuring out who I was. Turns out that took a lot longer than four years.

I grew up in a home that was very controlled and very clear about what was acceptable, or not acceptable, to think, feel, and believe. Questioning things was not safe. Having your own opinion was not encouraged. I learned early to keep my mouth shut, to read the room, to figure out what was wanted from me and stay out of trouble.

So by the time I arrived in the world as an adult, I had no practice at all in knowing my own mind.

The moment I admitted it out loud

In my late twenties I finally said it to a friend. I told her I had no idea what I believed politically. No idea. I had absorbed my family’s views for so long that I couldn’t tell where they ended and I began.

I was scared to bring it up. Afraid she would laugh at me. That she would shame me for not knowing something that most adults take for granted. That she would think less of me for having arrived in my late twenties without a single political opinion I could call my own.

She didn’t. She sat with me and taught me how to find out for myself. Where to look. What to read. How to sit with different perspectives and notice what actually resonated with me, not what I had been told to believe. She let me talk through my thoughts and had honest conversations with me without pushing back or “punishing” me if it was not “right”, or what she believed.

That conversation changed something. Not just politically. It was the first time someone had made it safe for me to have a mind of my own.

I didn’t realize until much later how significant that was. Or how rare it had been in my life up to that point. And not because I didn’t have loving safe friends in my life, but because I did not know it was possible.

What losing yourself actually looks like

I share this story because I know I am not the only one who has lived it. What happened to me made complete sense once I understood where it came from.

Losing yourself does not always look dramatic. It rarely does. It does not happen in one moment or one relationship or one devastating event.

It looks like a lifetime of learning to scan before you speak. Of monitoring the room before you form an opinion. Of suppressing what you actually think and feel in favor of what is acceptable, what is safe, what will keep the peace and keep you out of trouble.

It looks like sitting in a conversation and realizing, with a quiet shock, that you have no idea what you think. Not because you haven’t been paying attention. Because you have spent so long paying attention to everyone else that you have lost the thread back to yourself.

And it looks like being alone for the first time in a while and not knowing what to do with the quiet. Without anyone else’s needs to organize around, without a role to play or a mood to manage or a dynamic to navigate, you don’t know who you are. The silence feels disorienting rather than restful. Like you have been given a room of your own and realized you don’t know how to be in it.

Where it comes from

For most women who live here, this did not happen by accident.

It happened in homes where having your own thoughts was not safe. Where the adults around you were not curious about who you were becoming, for whatever reasons (fear, shame of their own) that they had about you and your future. Where love and approval were conditional on compliance, on not rocking the boat, on being the version of yourself that was easiest for everyone else to manage.

You did not lose yourself because something was wrong with you. You lost yourself because the environment you grew up in required it. Having your own thoughts, your own opinions, your own inner world, was a risk you could not afford to take.

So you learned to suppress it. To keep it quiet. To become so good at reading and reflecting and adapting that eventually you stopped being able to find yourself underneath all of that. And the result of that is being completely disconnected from yourself. Your thoughts. Your opinions. Your physical body sensations. That little gut feeling that tells you “nope”. And there are real consequences to that in adulthood. But in childhood it was survival.

That is not a character flaw. That is a survival response to an environment that did not make room for you.

The inner child who learned to disappear

There is a younger version of you who learned this lesson. Early. In the specific, concrete way that children learn things, through what happened when she tried to be herself and what happened when she didn’t.

She learned that her inner world was not welcome. That her thoughts and opinions and desires were inconvenient at best and dangerous at worst. And so she did what children do when their environment requires it. She made herself smaller. She went quiet. She turned her attention outward and kept it there.

She became very good at knowing what everyone else needed. And she lost access to herself and what she needed.

That younger part of you is still operating by those rules. Still scanning before speaking. Still suppressing before feeling. Still waiting for permission to have a thought that is just hers.

She has been waiting a long time for what my friend gave me that day. Permission. Safety. Someone who wouldn't punish her for not knowing. And now, instead of that coming from someone else, it comes from you.

Finding your way back

What my friend gave me that day was not information. It was permission. Permission to not know. Permission to find out. Permission to have a mind of my own without shame or consequence.

That is what this work is really about. Not fixing what is broken. Finding what was always there, underneath all the scanning and the suppressing and the shapeshifting. The woman who has opinions and desires and a self that is entirely hers.

She is still in there. She went quiet because quiet was the only safe option for a very long time. But she did not disappear.

And you do not have to keep living by rules that were never meant to be permanent. You do not have to keep asking for permission to know your own mind.

You are allowed to find out what you think. What you feel. What you want.

Not what everyone else needs from you. What you actually want.

That is not selfish. That is the beginning of coming home to yourself.

Let's Talk

—A

Still Valley's retreat runs this October on the Emerald Coast. If you have spent a lifetime scanning before speaking and are ready to find out what you actually think and feel, this is the work we do together. A small number of spots remain. Visit stillvalleyretreat.com to learn more or schedule a discovery call.